Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge. (For archives prior to January 2007, please click here. For posts after November 2007, please click here.) Comments on this blog are now closed.

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The link to the Carnival of Education is invalid. An invalid URL on my domain redirects to the main page, so any interested readers should click the sidebar link to the Carnival of Education to view Mrs. Bluebird's post [and the rest, all of which are excellent reads].

Back to school in the UK, amidst the controversy of childrenâ€™s performance gradually slipping down in maths and literacy despite Â£ 21 billions spent on the programme to improve things. By Alistair Owens

We have to accept the status quo within our schooling system as a leviathan that will struggle to change course easily. As parents how then do we handle the probability of our children passing through the whole system before any modification can take effect? Falling standards, compares to a football team slipping down a league, requires immense effort to recover.

If children are behind as they enter the critical move to secondary school, it can be devastating to see the numbers that switch off during this transition. If it was easy to find an answer we would be out of the woods long ago, but if a 21 billion investment has failed we cannot expect the solution to prompt or entirely school driven.

Literacy and numeracy skills benefit from a high degree of practice and repetition. This can be dull and boring or entertaining and fun depending on the approach. Parents taking a lead at home can now support their child through the range of educational games â€“ used in school, that can pay dividends through additional practice at home.

Function Well Maths games to practice multiplication and division, and English games to practice say grammar and proof reading skills have opened the door to a hidden army of parents. Taking a more constructive role in supporting their children can lead to a significant boost in performance in school and a desire to learn more.